Fate
by Mystia Katsuragi
Summary: Gill doesn't think he's been blessed by fate, but a certain businesswoman disagrees. Gill x Luna, as well as every other Animal Parade pairing, despite occurring on Waffle Island. Really, really late entry for The Village Square's December 2011 contest.


**_Fate_**

_By Mystia Katsuragi_

Romantically, fate didn't bless me, but it never really mattered to me. As the Mayor's son, my priority is to improve the condition of Waffle Island, to make it seem—no, _be_ more appealing to current and prospective residents. Not only that, but I had no interest in falling in love, nor did I want to sacrifice the precious time and money that would be mandatory for a woman to be happy with me.

Besides, I wasn't interested in any of the females around here; they aren't my "type," I suppose.

There's the blonde waitress, who can act cute sometimes, but she's too stupid, and she acts like a glutton, despite not being able to cook. Also, she likes Chase more than me, and she clearly displayed this affection when he returned to the Island. I believe the two will be marrying soon, as I was invited by Chase to their wedding, although I can't recall the date. (I know it's soon, though, and on a Sunday.)

The dancer girl is very stubborn, although she behaved more kindly to me when she learned of my friendship with Luke, but she still retains her arrogance, so I won't develop a romantic interest in her. I wonder if Luke still has a crush on her; when I last spoke to him, he claimed that their relationship hadn't advanced beyond friendship, but I'm confident that he still likes her.

Phoebe and Anissa are alright, but they liked other men—Calvin and Jin, who they are now married to—and I wouldn't be so desperate as to steal them from those two. It's not like I'm particularly interested in either of the women; as intelligent and focused as they are, we share no common interests, only personality traits. A romantic relationship wouldn't have worked out between us.

Renee and Kathy were also candidates, but their personalities and interests don't match against mine very well, and they had their own romantic interests as well: the fisherman Toby and the blacksmith Owen, who share the sentiments. I don't think Kathy and Owen have applied for marriage yet; if they did, then Hamilton or Elli didn't inform me of the application, which would be very unusual, since they always tell me about important events occurring on the Island. However, a date for the wedding between Renee and Toby was recently chosen; Elli looked at the calendar and decided on a day in the middle of summer, which is more than a season from now.

"They said 'love lasts forever, so we don't need to rush into our wedding,'" she informed me later that day, a strange sparkle lighting up her russet-brown eyes. "I remember when I fell in love, with Jeff and then Trent. It was such a wonderful feeling. It's too bad the relationships with them didn't work out." She sighed contentedly, not bothered by the fact that she hasn't seen either of those men in several years. "Gill, when you fall in love, I hope everything goes well for you."

She said 'when,' not 'if,' implying that I would eventually love someone, but at the time, I highly doubted it. After all, on Waffle Island, there was no one who I wanted to fall in love with.

However, soon afterward, this changed; recently, the Tailor's Shop reopened, and I've developed a moderate romantic interest in a certain girl who works there.

The other girl who works at the Tailor's—the seamstress, Candace—was bullied by Julius when they were young. She didn't associate his bullying with an awkward affection for her, so she was excessively surprised when, upon his hearing of her return to the Island, he confessed his love to her. She was even more shocked when she learned of who would be sewing her wedding gown: her sister, Luna, who was against the marriage until the moment when Julius slipped the ring onto Candace's finger.

Even I'm curious as to why Luna suddenly seems so supportive of her sister's marriage with her childhood tormentor. When she visits the Town Hall to inform us of her participation in Candace's ceremony, I'll ask about her change of heart. It will be difficult to make the question seem purely professional instead of casual, but I'll work out what to say before she gets here.

It looks like I won't have enough time to figure out a sample dialogue. As I'm heading to the Town Hall to start a new work day, the pigtailed girl is trailing behind me, matching her light footsteps with my heavier ones. I take a deep breath before turning around and attempting to start a conversation with her.

"Miss Luna," I begin, carefully choosing the words as I greet the pink-haired businesswoman, "how are you doing this morning?"

When I finish that sentence, she smiles earnestly at me, showcasing her ivory-white teeth. I mentally note the lack of braces or a retainer, despite her perfectly straight teeth. Given the way she smiles, she must have had them in the past; people who wear braces have a larger height to their smiles, and this is the same type of grin which Luna is currently displaying. I wonder when she got rid of her braces.

A hand is waved in front of my face, causing me to return to reality, just in time to experience a quick burst of pain.

"Ouch," I mutter, sending an irritated glare to the owner of the finger which was just flicked against my forehead. "Why did you do that?"

She curls her fingers into fists then crosses her arms over her stomach, an amused smirk replacing her previous smile. "Well, I returned your greeting," she starts, "but you were too busy staring at my face to hear me, weren't you, Mister Gill?"

I frown at this address; it's not familiar to me, and I don't particularly want to become acquainted with it. "'Gill' is fine," I calmly inform her. "You don't need to use that title for me. It's too formal for my liking."

"Likewise," she states, her toothy grin widening. When I raise my eyebrow at her, she adds, "You can call me 'Luna,' then. It'd be weird if you were the only one without the title." The smirk reverts into a smile as she points out, "I'm only a few months younger than you are, so you don't need to be overly formal around me. It's not very fun to be with you when you talk like an old man."

I don't talk like that. "What do I say that would make you feel like I'm an old man?" I ask her. "This is how I talk. I'm an adolescent male, not an old man. I act my age, don't I?"

She forcefully giggles, a boastful tone in her laugh, and she states, "You don't act like you're eighteen, that's for sure. You act more like...a forty-year-old geezer."

I mimic her position, crossing my arms over my chest, as I question, "Aren't you confusing me with my father?"

Her sapphire-blue eyes light up, and she laughs again, this time naturally. Did my response amuse her? "No, I'm not, I promise," she happily assures me, "although Mister Hamilton is way more of a geezer than you are, Gill."

My name... When she says it, I can feel my heart beating louder and faster than normal. I don't know how to deal with this, so I'll continue to ignore it until my reaction bothers me so much that I'll have to deal with it somehow.

I wonder if one-sided loves are always this troublesome.

I quickly drop that subject, since it's reached a dead end, in my opinion. In its stead, I bring up the topic of Candace's marriage with Julius, which I'd almost forgotten about. "I heard you'll be sewing your sister's wedding gown," I casually state as I unlock the entrance to the Town Hall, having stood in front of it for several minutes. "Is there a reason why you decided to take on this task?"

She follows me into the building then closes the door behind her, and the skirt of her dress floats upward when she spins around to do so. "Hey, that's not very nice," she murmurs, a false frown on her lips. "You don't think I'd make the dress out of the goodness of my heart?"

I can't help but scoff at her horrible attempt to lie about this. "Perhaps you would," I admit, "if it wasn't _Julius_ who she was marrying. You've been against the marriage since the beginning, but now you want to sew the dress. This is basically the same as accepting the marriage, since you'll have such an important part in it; you're instrumental for its success. Were you unaware of the implications of your actions?"

"I'm fully aware of what I'm doing," she smugly informs me. "I still don't want that jerk to marry my sister, but when Candace asked our grandmother to sew the wedding gown, I decided to do it myself. If I'm the one who's making the gown, then I'm necessary for the marriage to work. In other words, it's up to me whether or not the ceremony will be a success or a complete failure, and which of the two results do you think I'm aiming for?"

Could she be trying to...? No, there's no way she would really do that to her sister. Even though she doesn't like Julius, she wants Candace to be happy, right?

Luna claps her hands together directly in front of my face, creating a sound which is loud enough to forcibly eject me from my thoughts. "Pay attention when someone's talking to you!" she demands, but her soprano isn't angry: she sounds amused. "And what's with that face you're making? It looks like you just got scammed of several thousand gold. Well, that's the kind of face I'd make, if I was scammed."

She's always thinking about money, finance, profit—anything involving business. Maybe this is why I'm attracted to Luna: I see myself in her.

I calmly begin to relay my thoughts to her. "You still dislike Julius," I start, "but you want to create the wedding gown, which is necessary for the marriage to—"

"Yeah, yeah," she interrupts, dismissively waving her left hand at me. "Can you tell me something I don't know, something I didn't tell you myself? I want to hear your thoughts, Gill, not a restatement of mine."

I feel my face heating up, either from anger or embarrassment, and I drop my composed tone when I speak again. "You don't want Julius to marry your older sister, do you?" I practically shout. "I believe you're attempting to sabotage the wedding, because you want their marriage to fail. Am I right, or am I not?"

The startled expression in her blue eyes indicates that I was not right. "Are you serious?" she murmurs, slightly turning her head to the right. "Is that what you think of me?" She moves her head again, downward this time, and she frowns a little, as if she's disappointed in me. "Do you really think I'm that horrible of a person? Would the Luna who you're familiar with be that cruel to her older sister?"

Her soprano voice breaks halfway through that fourth rhetorical question, and I start to feel a little guilty for accusing her of attempting to sabotage her sister's wedding. I almost apologize, but she speaks again, small tears forming in her eyes. "I'll admit that your theory wasn't too far from the truth," she mutters. "At first, I did want to ruin the wedding, which is why I asked about the gown and said I'd make it for her. I wanted to have the opportunity to screw things up for that jerk who bullied my sister into shyness."

She looks away, at my father's office desk, then she continues in an ashamed tone. "As I watched them, I noticed how happy Candace was, and there wasn't a single word of abuse from Julius' mouth. He wasn't picking on her; if anything, he was treating her like a princess, or maybe a living doll. He acted as if she was the most precious person on the planet."

Luna turns her head to face me again, a small smile on her fair face. "It made me realize that he really does love her, and he wants to make her happy. When I acknowledged this, it was like all of my hatred for him just...vanished, like it never existed in the first place. What remained was the optimistic feeling that everything would work out perfectly for them, as it already has."

She smiles wider, giggling slightly, and adds, "You know, Julius returned to Waffle Island so soon after we did, when neither of us had been here for several years. I think it was fate that they met again."

A slight smirk forms on my lips as I playfully reprimand, "You're crazy, Luna. I don't think it was fate. That sort of thing doesn't even exist. It must have been the rainbows that brought you back here."

She laughs at this idea, not taking me seriously, which is alright with me, since I didn't want her to believe in my theory. "Maybe I am crazy, though," she states, a thoughtful expression on her face. "I mean, what sane girl would fall in love with you, of all people? There must be something wrong—"

"Could you repeat that for me?"

"Huh? Repeat what?"

"What you just said—could you say it a second time?"

A bright pink brush lights up her face like fireworks, silently telling me that Luna doesn't want to say it again. Her mouth opens a little, as if she's going to speak, but she doesn't utter a single word. She stammers something, but it's not a clear sentence; I can't understand it.

Perhaps this isn't a one-sided love, after all?

Since she's obviously at a loss for words right now, I suppose I'll talk in her place. "That was a love confession." It's not a question; it's a statement of fact. "Luna, that wasn't a joke, was it? I should take you seriously, shouldn't I?" And the unasked question: I should confess my love for you, as well, right?

Her reddened cheeks darken more, and she lowers her head, her sapphire eyes staring at the carpet. "It wasn't a joke," she murmurs, her voice softer than I've ever heard it. "As much as I'd like to pretend otherwise, I was being completely serious."

She looks to the side in an attempt to prevent me from looking at the upper portion of her face, but I step closer to her, so I can still see her eyes, if nothing else. "I-I didn't intend to say anything about it. I-I was going to keep those feelings a s-secret from you until they disappeared, but...b-before I could stop myself, the words just...spilled out." She tilts her head upward a little so she can see past her bangs; they were covering her eyes. "You don't need to respond to it. It was entirely an accident that I even mentioned—wait, Gill, what are you do—?"

Before she can reject me, I quickly lean forward to press my mouth against hers, careful not to hit her lips with my teeth. Luckily for me, she does not react quickly enough to prevent my rapid execution of the kiss, and to my surprise, when she regains her composure, she kisses me back, putting more pressure against my mouth than I did against hers. She raised her right arm and places her hand behind my neck, preventing me from moving without carrying her body with mine, then she grasps my right hand with her left one, sliding her fingers past my own and pressing them against the back of my palm.

In unison, we break off the kiss to breathe in some air, and I mentally note the duration of our oral contact: seven seconds. I suppose I should not have expected it to last much longer than that, given my inexperience with this sort of thing.

Luna speaks as soon as she recovers from her brief lack of oxygen. "Given your actions just now, it looks like you share my feelings," she cheerfully whispers, a playful smile raising the corners of her mouth upward by one half of a centimeter. "Either that, or you're trying to make me feel better about my big screw-up in confessing to you."

"Come on, Luna," I mutter, disregarding the slight heat that's slowly warming up my cheeks. "You know very well I'm not the type of person to lie about how I feel."

Her beautiful, blue eyes seem somewhat startled by my words, and she treats them as a reply to her love confession from a few minutes ago, despite the fact that I didn't actually admit my love for her. Even so, we both seem to acknowledge our newly formed relationship, and I have full faith that we'll maintain a romantic interest in each other for a long time.

Sure enough, several seasons later, quite a while after Candace moved into Julius' house and nearly everyone else on the Island married someone within their age bracket, Luna and I applied for marriage at the Town Hall. We also requested to have her appoint a date for our public wedding, which would be held at the Church, since all of the other residents had their weddings there. Elli has been aware of the status of our relationship since the day the two of us became more than friends, but even she is stunned to hear of our plans for marriage.

"You two have made a big decision," she reminds me while we're filling out the applications for my marriage with Luna, who just returned to the Tailor Shop. "The date of your wedding has been decided, and after we sign off these papers, it'll be too late to back out of the marriage. You, of all people, know divorces aren't allowed on Waffle Island, so you have to realize how important it is for you to be absolutely sure that this is what you want."

As I'm writing down my current occupation, I inform the brunette, "This is what I want. In summer, I'll have my wedding with Luna, and afterward, we'll never be separated; we'll be together for the rest of our lives. I'm fully prepared for that." My hands stop for a second, and I smile to myself, but I'm sure Elli can see my grin. "I love her more than anything else in the world. I want her to always be happy, and that's why we're getting married—having a wedding is for the sake of bringing even more happiness to the girl who I care for the most."

Elli smiles back at me; by now, neither of us are working on the marriage license. "That's great, Gill," she gleefully tells me. "I'm happy everything worked out for you. I was afraid you wouldn't be alright when it came to finding someone who you love, and I didn't want you to be unsatisfied with the way things turned out, but it looks like you have it all under control."

She places a rosy-palmed hand atop my shoulder, then she closes her eyelids and smiles once more. "Congratulations on your marriage!" she applauds, although it's way too early for her to say it. "I'm sure fate will bless you and Luna with more happiness in the years to come, so look forward to it. I'll always be cheering for you two on the sidelines."

With that said, she removes her hand from my shoulder, then she returns her concentration to the Waffle Island marriage application in front of us. Within seconds, I also begin to work on the document again, not forgetting what Elli just told me.

Maybe the two of them—Luna back then, and now Elli too—are right, and 'fate' actually does exist. Maybe that's what brought the two of us together. Even so, what's keeping us together today isn't fate: it's our combined willpower and a shared desire to never be apart.

That's what I'll continue to believe in.

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><p><em>Author's Notes: Well, this was my entry for the December 2011 contest in The Village Square forum, but I'm uploading it waaay too late for it to even be considered a contest entry. XD; My editor sent this document back to me a while ago, but I never got around to making the corrections she requested, since even then the story was overdue;; but I finally edited it this afternoonevening and am posting it on FF for the sake of completion. I mean, if it's a decent fanfic and I've completed it, then I should upload it on here, right?... right. As always, honest and sincere criticism is appreciated~_

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><p><strong><em>~Omake~<em>**

_"Gill, did I tell you who's going to sew my wedding dress? I'll give you a hint: she's returning the favor."_


End file.
